Max Q: Up, up and away – TechCrunch

The big news this week is that I'm buying a micro-blogging site. It's just kidding. I send an email to aria.techcrunch@gmail.com if I want to say hi.

In this issue:

• Diversity and inclusion in the space industry
• A roundup of Elon’s antics
• This week with founder Luisa Buinhas

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Major space companies pledge to boost diversity and publicly share hard numbers

ULA, JPL, and Rocket Lab pledged to improve diversity and inclusion with regular check-ins. What does that mean? The companies agreed to increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups in our collective technical workforce and to work with universities to improve the diversity of their engineering programs.

Each year, the companies will present their employment goals at the Space Symposium conference. They will encourage others to join the pledge.

This week with…Luisa Buinhas

Vyoma is a venture that aims to join observational data of space debris with satellite operations. Vyoma won the pitch competition.

What are you working on?

I support Phase B activities at Vyoma. On this very week, we are conducting the final evaluations of potential ground communications networks that we will use to talk to our satellites. I intend to submit a proposal for automation of decision-making in space traffic management to DLR at the same time.

What happened in the news last week that you can't stop thinking about?

The announcement of three new heavy-lift rockets that will put thousands of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites in low-Earth orbits. There will be 3,236 new satellites added to the space in the next few years. There is value in providing broadband to remote corners of the world, but this will stress the space environment and cause more space debris.

Seven billion people on the planet depend on space-based services. Even flights cannot take off without satellite services because of the increased risk of in-orbit collision. As a tragedy of the commons, this is yet another reminder of the importance of keeping our orbits clean for generations to come.

What are you looking forward to next week?

I'm looking forward to decorating the office with new furniture and matching wall art this week. A friend of mine who I haven't seen in three years is coming to Munich tomorrow and I'm very excited to catch up. I am going to go chocolate egg hunting with my family in Lisbon after I catch a flight back to Lisbon. Easter games are a lot more fun for our dog because she always finds the secret locations where we hide the chocolate.

What song has been on repeat?

I have had a lot of nostalgia of my teenage years in Brazil.

More news from TC and beyond

• Axiom Space‘s Ax-1, the company’s first fully private mission, docked with the ISS on Saturday morning. The four-person crew will spend eight days aboard the station.
• Northrop Grumman began construction on a 25,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that provide space systems engineering and integrated mission operations services the U.S. military.
• Pythom Space responded to safety concerns raised by folks in the industry and the media after the startup released a video of a test of the first stage of its Eiger rocket. (You can watch the video below.) “Virgin had several accidents, including fatalities,” the startup says. “ABL blew up their second stage last month, Astra have been blowing up more rockets than we can count. What puts them and Pythom apart is neither that we are safer or more unsafe. The difference is we are more transparent.”
• Rocket Lab broke ground on a 250,000-square-foot facility in Virginia where it will manufacture the Neutron rocket. The site is adjacent to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, and near to Rocket Lab’s existing launch pad for the Electron rocket and a second launch pad site for Neutron.
• Space Capital published its Space Investment Quarterly report for the first quarter of this year. The firm found that $7.2 billion was invested into 118 space companies in Q1. Investment in the top 10 rounds made up $4.4 billion, or 61% of that overall number.
• Space Perspective released a first look of the interior of Spaceship Neptune, the company’s suborbital passenger capsule. Space Perspective wants to sell six-hour luxury journeys to suborbital space, with each ticket coming in at $125,000.
• SpaceX scored a contract from South Korea to launch five Earth observation satellites onboard a Falcon 9 by 2025.
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he will work to ensure that SpaceX’s operations remain in the state. “I have worked with Elon Musk very closely with regard to Tesla and the Giga factory in Austin, Texas,” he said. “And we will be working with him very closely, every step of the way in Boca Chica for the future of SpaceX. We want that future and that vision to come from Boca Chica, from Brownsville, Texas.”
• United Launch Alliance ordered 116 RL10C-X engines for its Vulcan Centaur rocket from Aerojet Rocketdyne. This is the largest order for RL engines ever, Aerojet said.

The Micro-Jump is from Pythom.

Finally…a favor

Found is nominated for a Webby for best technology podcasts. You can help them win the People's Voice Award by voting before April 21.

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